


find a way to tell you

by syzygylovers



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: "I wanna tell you but I don't know how", Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Michael never tells Eleanor she was in love with Chidi, also Janet is very trusting with her porn, he just never told her, it seemed very ooc honestly, no selfish motives there, post episode: s03e06 A Fractured Inheritance, those funky simulation things he has come in handy, trying to tell her but he can't
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-24
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-08-28 10:17:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16721445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/syzygylovers/pseuds/syzygylovers
Summary: Michael, in a moment of desperation, uses Janet's simulation device to explore the different possibilities of his actions. He finds it eludes him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Myx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myx/gifts).



“Hey, Janet. Is it alright if I borrow these for a while?” Michael fiddled with the small auditory pieces in his hand, specially made for Chidi to explore the different possibilities of each decision. An opposite torture, if you will. 

“Of course, Michael! Just...ignore the simulation of Jason lying naked face down in a hammock while he asks you to rub him down with tanning lotion. It’s a kink in the system I haven’t quite worked out yet.”

He saw right through her lie, of course, like she probably saw through his lately. 

Michael told himself it was completely for research purposes, trying to see the exact reason things were the way they were with his human friends. But that wasn’t really it, and it was becoming harder to lie to himself with Chidi’s ongoing ethics lessons.

It was, in reality, the result of some humanoid curiosity, probably a result of being on Earth for so long. He couldn’t help how it poked and prodded him, every time she was around. Every time he thought of what he really felt, what he really wanted to say, there it was again. Stabbing him like an exquisite torture, never ceasing. And with the Janet’s latest tool, he was sure to put an end to it. 

The first moment he loaded the machine with was the night of the party, just before his neighborhood was torn away.

Shawn had ordered his neighborhood be destroyed as they tried to find the humans, not knowing they were safe next to Michael’s side the whole time, having picked up on all his clues.

The stars were out and bright, and had she been taller, they would have glistened in hair like a crown. The group had been dancing, and through most of the evening, she had chosen him to dance with.

He swallowed the fears he felt (it was only a simulation, he reasoned) and approached her. 

“Eleanor, would you like to dance with me?” A slow song began to play, and she nodded as she took his outstretched hand. His voice was deep and velvety, not unlike a purr. 

He lead her to the floor, the others having made their exits a while back. Eleanor looked over her shoulder but to what Michael wasn’t sure. There was nothing behind her.

They swayed together to the slow song in the distance, and she eventually rested her head on his chest like he had wished she had done when he saw her dancing with Chidi. His hands were polite, remaining against her back.

“What’s on your mind, demon buddy?” She looked up at him, pupils dilated and shining with the stars reflected in them. There was a peculiar look on her face, as if nothing else mattered to her, including their plan to trek through the symbolic underworld the next day.

Transfixed by her stare, it was easier to believe the simulation. “You are. Always.”

“Are you drunk? Can you even get drunk?” Her gaze didn’t change much, and in the lighting her lips looked awfully tempting. 

“Eleanor,” he said, in that way he said her name, different from the way Chidi or Tahani said it. “Demons don’t have the same emotions as humans. You only need the two, really.”

“Yeah, I know. You went over this already.” 

Michael continued as though she hadn’t said anything, trying not to lose his nerve. “I care about the others, tremendously. But you…” His hands shook against her back against his will.

“Yeah?”

The thought of her being actually tortured for all of eternity got his heart racing. Damn this human suit, he thought. All of the emotions he felt that night were hard to push away in that moment. The fear of losing her, of never seeing her again, all greater than his fear of being retired. He had to remember it was only a simulation and he could snap his fingers at any time and be done with it.

“You’re the reason for all of this.” He waved a hand to the soon-to-be demolished neighborhood. “You were mine to torture and I made this just for you.”

“Really?” She squinted, barely believing him but intrigued all the same. “All 800-whatever versions of this?”

He grinned, still not quite sure she was grasping what he had to say; he remembered briefly that Janet said there was a time limit to the simulations, and his time was running out.

“It wasn’t about the torture. You kept outsmarting me, and at first I hated you for it.”

Eleanor began to pull away from him. “Wow bud, thanks for that.”

“No! That’s not what-- no. At first. But you’re smarter than the others will ever give you credit for.” The words he was saying sounded like praise to him, but they didn’t have the same effect on Eleanor as he thought they would. 

She pulled away from him completely then, folding her hair behind her ear as she spoke. “You know, if you hated me so much you didn’t have to drag me to the dancefloor to tell me!”

He knew there was no way this simulation would progress into anything better than what he expected it would. With a snap of his fingers, Eleanor, the dancefloor, and his neighborhood disappeared and the untended library returned in its place. 

“Damn!” He was grateful this wing was basically abandoned, yanking the buds from his ears. Michael cursed again, and the chair next to him was subsequently flipped and clattered to the floor.

How could he get this feeling off his chest if he couldn’t even say the right words?

Maybe...a moment that he didn’t say anything. Or one that he was sure she felt something too?

He placed the devices back in his ears, closed his eyes and thought of the moment he wanted next.

“Uh, you didn’t give me a pin, man. I don’t have one.”

The obnoxious blue lights that decorated the office played with the angles of her face. 

“You three, go. Now.” He instructed the others, knowing he didn’t have much time left. Shawn was coming. They jumped, leaving him there with Eleanor. 

“I figured it out. The Trolley Problem.” This time, rather, instead of telling her how he figured it out, he cut to the point. More time that way. “Sacrifice yourself for the ones you love.”

She kept looking toward the hallway they came from, knowing his boss was going to show up at any time. “Yeah not now. We gotta go.”

“Sacrificing myself...for the one I love.” He watched her face, needing to see the moment she understood.

“You…?” 

Michael pinned the result of his work over the last 300 years to her lapel, stepping up on the ledge as he did so. She was so much shorter than him and somehow the perfect height. “I love you, Eleanor.” 

She only looked shocked. There wasn’t enough time to really assess how she felt, but he knew how he did. Was that really it? Love? The feeling that had pushed upon every single thing he did for the past 801 reboots was something as simple as that.

“Dude, no!” She grasped onto his arms, trying to hold herself to him, but Shawn was getting closer. 

He took one last look at her before pushing her through the portal, but this time he knew it wouldn’t be the last time he saw her. 

Not feeling like reliving the moment with Shawn, he snapped his fingers before the simulation felt too real and was back in the unused library. He sighed, that one going significantly better. It startled him to think that that was the feeling he had been struggling with for such a long time. Maybe for the next one he could try to draw it out a little longer, figure it out a bit more? It was a longshot but it was almost all he had.

He closed his eyes, imagining one of his favorite moments.

“Sounds like your friend is a pickle short of a pickle party.” She was quite drunk at that point, nearly falling off the stool at one point. It was endearing to see her inhibitions so low, to the point he could have sworn she had been flirting with his bartender character.

As the night had gone on, he shrugged off the character and was just himself. 

“You know, she’s more than she thinks she is. Deep down, everyone loves her.” He smiled as he dried out a shot glass. 

“If ya love her so much why doncha marry her?” Eleanor slurred her words, and at that point he cut her off, water only. 

Her pointed statement made Michael feel a different feeling inside, a fuzzy one like a wool sweater. Kind of itchy, like there was more to it. “It isn’t quite that simple. She doesn’t know.”

She hiccuped, bouncing slightly. “Well then we could go out back and bang it out. Pretend I’m your friend.” There was a gleam in her eye as she chewed on her straw, like there was something there just beyond his reach. 

“Sorry, but there’s no substitute for her.” He set a glass of water in front of her, motioning for her to drink up. 

“Your loss, dude. Was totally gonna blow ya if you wanted.” She sucked down her water, and asked for how much she owed him, and Michael snapped.

He sat back in his chair, visibly shaken. If Janet came in at that point, she would have run through her list of symptoms to see what had come over him. That had been...something. How eager she was. He had almost forgotten how foolish humans got when they were drunk. 

It lit a part of his mind that had become hopeful, despite how hard he tried pushing it away. There was no way she really felt those things, but he had to be sure. For research, of course.

One last time, he imagined the situation and let himself be carried away by the shift in his perception. It was far more recent than the others, fresher in his mind. Easier to imagine because he had spent some time imagining it already.  
They were in the car on the way to Donna’s PTA election, Eleanor beside him in the passenger seat. “How could she choose someone like Dave?” 

“What’s wrong with Dave? He’s polite, an architect, a caring father; everything a single white woman age 50-65 in America statistically should want.” He didn’t emphasize the word architect like he wanted to, but he wondered nonetheless if she would want him.

“I don’t know. It feels like it’s a cover for something. I mean, she doesn’t love anyone.”

He debated pulling the car over to be able to talk to her properly, to look at her when she spoke. “Why not? People can change, learn to love. Even demons can...so I have been told. It happened once, I think.”

She glared out the window, and he knew she wasn’t looking forward to anything but the free food at the election. Classic Eleanor.

“What I’m saying is that maybe she did learn to love. Maybe she could get over the issues she had with it, with falling for someone like Dave and realized it made her feel better being with him.” He kept his gaze forward, hands clenched on the steering wheel. 

He didn’t see her turn to him, a quizzical look on her face. “Pull over, dude.” 

That same, basic fear came over him. This hadn’t happened in the actual timeline. He had driven her to the school and that was it, barely speaking again until Donna had been elected. Still, he abided her wishes, pulling the car to the shoulder where all sorts of trash filled the ditch.

“Look at me. What aren’t you saying? Impart your all knowing demon knowledge on me.”

As he had failed to do in all the other simulations, he tried his best to still himself, and not show his cards. It was so much easier pretending during the first reboot to be something he wasn’t, but she could see through him after 300 years. “Your mother does love him. He makes her as close to good as she can be.” Ater torturing her for years, she was the only one that could give him that look and make him feel the way he did. “That’s all she has.”

“What aren’t you saying?” Her chin lifted, like she wasn’t sure of him, like he was all the college guys that said she could have as much free beer as she wanted.

He had told her before, he could tell her again. Just grab the nerve and.. “You make me better, Eleanor. Since the 57th reboot.” He dropped his eyes from hers, expecting her to shy away or lash out. “I love you and that’s it. I love you.”

What he felt instead was different. Her hand moved over his on the console, tentative and cautious, as if for the first time she realized he was a full-blooded born and raised in “hell” demon. 

“Why didn’t you say anything, dude?” She sounded more surprised and less disgusted than he figured she would be, especially after the party simulation. “You having the hots for me for what, a thousand years or whatever. That coulda been fun but you kept it to yourself? That’s torture.” 

He chuckled, still not meeting her eyes. The thought of it being torture felt far too one sided to be his usual work. 

“Wish you would have said something earlier. You got that whole silver fox thing going and I’m not gonna lie. It works.” When he didn’t say anything, she tried again. “Hey.”

Michael looked to her, finding her eyes full of something he had only dreamed of -- a recent addition to his life on Earth were dreams. It reminded him of the first simulation, dancing with Eleanor with stars in her eyes. “Hm?”

“You know…” she held his hand a little more firm. “I’ve had sex in a car before,” she took off her seatbelt, and took the keys out of the ignition. “But never with a demon.” 

One leg came over the console, and he held it to steady her, his hand shaking as it made contact. With another less than graceful move, she was all the way over, straddling him in the driver’s seat. “Anything like this happen in the reboots?” Her face was dangerously close to his then, and he could swear he tasted the mintiness of her toothpaste on her breath.

Her hands took his, placing them on her thighs, then touching his neck and face. “I’ve kinda been dying to do this forever, actually.”

Then, her lips met his and his stupid human body felt the fireworks he had only read about. He couldn’t stop touching her. He wanted to feel more and --

There was nothing. The library, the clumsy arrangement of papers on the wall opposite him. The deafening quiet of the hall. 

Damn! What had that even been? How had he run out of time and not realized what happened? He had to go back in.

Just as he was about to close his eyes and dream it up again, the door cracked open. 

“Hey, Mikey, got a second?” It was Eleanor, clad in her bright striped clothing and hair loose around her face, just as he liked.

“Yeah. Actually, I need to tell you something.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things do and don't go as foreseen by that magical device.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warning: vomit  
> skip to the seventh paragraph if needed

“Hey, Mikey, got a second?” It was Eleanor, clad in her bright striped shirt, her hair, loose around her face, just as he liked.

“Yeah. Actually, I need to tell you something.” He wrung his hands behind his back, worried about how she would take it in this timeline. It was one thing with the simulations, and he wondered for a moment if it was just the programming that made it like that. 

Her mouth twisted up. “Can it wait? Jason remembered that Janet worked at that weird American restaurant when we were in Australia and he wanted to try the Grand Canyon dog. It ain’t gonna end well.” She lifted a hand showing two large garbage bags with hole cut out for arms and a head. 

A wicked grin came over his face. Of course he wanted to see that. No amount of morality and ethics classes would ever make him not want to see someone throw up an impossible amount of hot dog, macaroni, and onion rings. Humans really were disgusting. “After you.” He took his? bag and waved her out of the room, hoping she hadn’t noticed the earbuds on the table. 

It was a truly awful sight, but the two of them had laughed enough for all the others. Tahani looked like she was turning green, Chidi standing next to her disappointed in Jason but knowing he could do nothing. 

He walked back to the room he had set up in, Eleanor still laughing next to him. “That was intense, dude.” She mimicked a fountain before wiping tears away from the corner of her eyes. 

Michael had nearly forgotten the earplugs sitting on the table, only remembering them when Eleanor took a step forward and grabbed them. “Whatcha lookin’ at on the magic machine?” 

Without his powers, he wasn’t fast enough on Earth to stop her from putting them in her ears. 

Her face contorted in a way that Michael couldn’t quite comprehend (was a lick of the lips considered a distressed reaction in humans?) as he took long strides to reach her before she saw too much. The simulation in the car. What was he thinking leaving it there?

In one smooth motion, he took them out of her ears and tossed them on the table. “You weren’t supposed to see that.” 

For once, Eleanor was speechless. Her mouth gaped like she was trying for words, but none came. Her eyes were wide as she, likely, recalled her own memories of that moment in the car, though not the specific scene she had just seen. 

And unfortunately, he thought, there was no way to snap the memory away. “A glitch in—“

“What the hell?”

She looked furious, red-cheeked, and was breathing heavily. With a few alterations, she could have passed for an actual demon. It was oddly terrifying and arousing. Michael tried not to think about the arousing bit; maybe another time.

Michael started again. “A glitch in the system took random moments in the database and spliced them together. Simple error, really, and I was attempting to fix it.” He clicked his fingers together in a quick bobble of sound, something he did when he was nervous or pretending.

Although Eleanor hadn’t known him that long in this dimension, he knew she saw right through it. “You said…” Her face was accusatory. “You said…” 

“That I love you.” He blurted it out. There was no turning back from both her knowing and her hearing him in the simulation.

Her brow furrowed. “That you’d been dying to do that forever.” A beat. “What?”

So maybe she hadn’t heard that part. “Whoops.”

“Why would you say that? That’s...that...ugh!” She balled her fists, flicked her hair from her face and turned to the door. Her cheeks were a vibrant shade of pink, spreading down her neck to her chest.

In reboot 146, he had seen this exact behavior when her soulmate, Glenn had proclaimed he was positive they would have gotten along perfectly in life, with their shared lifelong passion of fostering children. She really broke down that time, one of the few reboots the torture actually worked.

“Why did I…” He could see her struggling through the emotion and was braced for the worst. It was positively naive to think she’d actually have the same feelings from the simulation. “You can’t just jump me like that!”

She turned quickly and left, leaving Michael alone. Not quite like the other attempts he had made in that cursed machine, but this one felt worse. There was no erasing it this time.

He moved to follow her, console her any way he could, but when he reached the hall just beyond the door, there was no way of telling where she went. She was just...gone.

How could this have happened? It went so well in that last simulation. 

With a huff, he slumped down in the chair behind the desk. It was over. She would leave the group, probably continue in her ways of being a “trash bag” as she called it. There was nothing left to do. Eleanor was as stubborn as him, and there would be no way of talking to her about it. She’d deflect, play it off, and things would never be the same after that. The distance would grow between them. Somehow, the thought of that hurt more than the thought of never seeing her after giving her his senior staff pin. 

He stood suddenly, angry with himself for messing things up so badly. The earbuds he didn’t realize he was holding onto were sent flying into the farthest wall, breaking into several pieces upon impact. He cursed. For an all knowing “demon,” it sure hadn’t gone like he had hoped it would. It was careless of him to leave the device out. Stupid. 

He thought about what the other humans would suggest if he were to go and talk to them about what just happened. Knowing Jason, he would’ve have suggested a throwing a Molotov cocktail at someone (or something), regardless of the actual situation at hand. Chidi, crippled with indecision was never any real help and being there was no manager to go harass, Tahani wouldn’t be much help, either. Knowing he couldn’t talk to Eleanor, at least not yet, left him miserable and alone.

A thought came to mind. Janet! Of course he couldn’t just call out for her, but she was always helpful (when not accompanied by Derek or mooning over Jason.) Perhaps she would be able to give him the smallest bit of advice, or at least help him go back to the Judge where he would be ultimately retired. At least then he’d be free of his embarrassment. 

Last he’d seen her, she had just made that terrible meal for Jason, so she’d either be with him or coming up with something else for her human. Michael figured it was best to start there. 

Down the hall and to the left, then turning right two times, he found a large door of the main library room. It was amazing how the people of Arizona took no interest in the wealth of free knowledge at their disposal. He’d only seen one worker there, and they didn’t seem to care about the amount of dust piling up on every row of books.

At one of the tables at the far wall, Janet sat with her hands folded, as though she was waiting for him. Obviously not the case but fortuitous enough, at the very least. He put on a smile, and Janet immediately saw it wasn’t one of happiness. “Michael. Is there anything I can help with?” She didn’t rise, and her face held a look that she hadn’t had while in his neighborhood. Being on Earth made her different, just as it did him. 

“I screwed it up, Janet.” He sat at the table, long legs folded partially under the chair. “I don’t know what to do. You’re my oldest friend and I thought, maybe, you’d know what to do.” His hands sat on top the table, opposite hers. It was easy enough to see how much he had deflated from when she saw him earlier.

She smiled, like she had for couples therapy for Jason and Tahani. “Technically I don’t have an age, but I appreciate the sentiment. Tell me what happened.” 

Michael sighed before continuing. “Eleanor. I was stupid and used that device you made to,” he said with a wave of his hand, “explore other options of what could have been. Like alternate versions of this timeline.” Trying to make it sound as if he hadn’t gotten wrapped up in it, as if it was just a superfluous activity.

“Uh huh, sure.” Janet nodded, guilty of the same things. They had probably all seen her simulations, she figured. “Go on.”

“One was particularly interesting,” continuing to gesticulate, “and it got out of hand. Eleanor was a nosy little… and she saw it. Worst possible timing.”

Janet posed a thinking face even though she could think much faster than any Earth computer. “Hm. And this is upsetting to you? Why is that?”

He paused. “I don’t know, Janet.”

“You know...in reboot 802, Eleanor told me I needed to talk about my emotions. She told me I needed to sit with my feelings and think about them instead of keeping them inside.” Her mouth crumpled, a look of empathy she wasn’t capable of when he first met her. “It’s scary and hard but it’s the only thing that can help in this situation. Based on the simulations you ran, I could guess what those feelings are, but that’s something for you to come to terms with on your own.”

In the silence, Michael tried to figure out what to do next. Flee to Canada? A possibility. Launch himself into the sun? If only he could. Wallow in his emotions and eat a gallon of ice cream? The most likely option.

Janet continued. “And as your oldest friend, I think you should talk to her. She might be more understanding than you anticipate. I have a hunch.” Her mouth opened and she gave an excessive wink. “Get it, girl.”

“Thank you, Janet.” He smiled, easier this time with renewed hope. “Side note, the device spontaneously exploded. Don’t know how. You might have to make a new one.”

Michael returned to his abandoned room of the library, grabbing his few items. A Big Gulp soda, paperclips, and the remains of the simulation device. Beyond that, there wasn’t much beside the chair and a table, dust and old magazines. He remembered that Tahani had booked a hotel near the library, so he assumed that the rest of the gang had gone back to a hotel for the evening. He figured that because of what had happened earlier, Eleanor had gotten her own room so she could slip in without anyone noticing her demeanor. He’d head back there, to his own room, and prepare the room for moping. 

He was just about to leave when there was a knock on the door.

Eleanor.

“Can I come in?”

He couldn't help the smile that came over his face. It was like when he came through the portal to meet his friends. It was like when they came back after he told them about their deaths and afterlives. He was so...happy to see her. “Door’s open.”

She flashed a smile, fading in an instant. “Look, I’m sorry about how I reacted to that. It wasn’t real but it felt real, y’know?”

He did, but he only nodded, trying to wipe the stupid smile off his face. 

“I was gonna go to a bar and find a rando to bang it out with but Janet stopped me first. Stuff about sitting with your emotions and all that.”

“That sounds about right.” 

Eleanor continued as if he had said nothing. “The thing is… that whatever kinda scared me because it was kinda like you read my mind. And I barely know you. You’ve had 300 something years to get to know me, but I’ve only known you for a few weeks. It’s intense.” She looked him right in the eyes as she spoke. “You’ve got that authority thing I like and you’re killing it,” as she waved to his general everything. 

He understood. A rebuff. There were only a few times in her file he had seen her do that to a potential mate and it wasn’t often. But that was okay. Ice cream awaited.

“How did you know?” She looked him over questioningly. When he didn’t seem to know what she meant, she tried again. “How did you know that’s what I was thinking in the car when we went to my mom’s place?” 

Michael took a step back, rocked on his heel. “That was...just a simulation. Nothing more than a computer program Janet made.” What did she…

“Dude, if I had known you felt like that, we never would have made it to the PTA election. You said it was everything you ever wanted.” She crossed her arms and gave him a mischievous smile. “There’s a few ways we could get to know each other better. Ya get what I’m saying?” She took a step forward, taking his tie in her fingers.

“Are you sure?”

Eleanor pulled him closer by his tie, not quite as close as he would have liked but still quite close. “We could play Scrabble or something. I don’t care about what you can do with the X but I’d be interested in your Double Word Score.” She rolled her bottom lip between her teeth.

It stirred that feeling in him like during the simulation in the car. His hand found her hip, pulling her just close enough to purr in her ear, “You can only imagine what I can do with the X tile as I have abilities that you can only dream of, Eleanor. Besides, you don’t even like Scrabble.”

She gasped, hot against his neck. “Well then,” turning to hide the shiver that came over her. 

Michael didn’t need the device to imagine how it would play out this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> once again, so many thanks to Myx for helping out! you are so appreciated and lovely and you deserve the best!


End file.
